


I’ll Tell to Ye a Rovin’ Tale

by mimsyborogove



Series: Frightening Fall Fic Fest [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, SHFallFic, Week 4: Monsters/Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-11-15 06:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimsyborogove/pseuds/mimsyborogove
Summary: When a frightened mundane spots Ragnor Fell swimming unglamoured in Loch Ness while he and Catarina Loss are on vacation, Catarina helpfully turns the awkward encounter into one of the most enduring urban legends of the 20th century.





	I’ll Tell to Ye a Rovin’ Tale

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to keep this in line with the Week 2 fic, but that one leans more show canon, and this one ended up more book. 
> 
> CC will have to personally come to my house and fistfight me to get me to give up my headcanon that Ragnor is Scottish.
> 
> Title from _Tramps and Hawkers_ by Old Blind Dogs.

> _“The legendary Lost Herondale,” said Magnus. “You know, I was starting to think that was a rumor Catarina made up, like the Loch Ness Monster or the Bermuda Triangle.”_
> 
> _“Catarina made up the Bermuda Triangle?” said Alec._
> 
> _“Don’t be ridiculous, Alexander. That was Ragnor.”_
> 
> -Cassandra Clare, _Lord of Shadows_

_Loch Ness, 1933_

“Ragnor, are you insane? I’m not going swimming with you. We’ll both die of hypothermia.”

They were alone on the shore of Loch Ness, where they had stopped their hike through the Highlands for lunch. It was midsummer, and a warm day for Scotland, but still not exactly what Catarina considered swimming weather. 

“It’s not that cold,” Ragnor grinned wickedly over his shoulder, already knee deep in the water, the black and white stripes of his bathing costume standing out starkly against his green skin.

Catarina shook her head. Sometimes she wondered if Ragnor’s apparent inability to feel cold was a secret warlock mark, or if it just came from growing up in this climate. Either way, he could be an arrogant bastard about it.

If they were visiting _her_ birthplace instead of his, he would be complaining endlessly about the heat and the brightness of the sun and the smell of the ocean making him feel seasick while he hid under a beach umbrella, glaring at the sand. It might knock his arrogance down a peg or two at least. Catarina made a mental note of where to suggest for their next vacation.

Not that Ragnor had actually been born right by Loch Ness. He would never admit exactly what village he had been born near, even to her and Magnus, but Catarina could make a good guess by the areas they avoided hiking near. 

It was something they didn’t talk about, but both understood. They didn’t hike near certain parts of the Highlands. There was an island in the Caribbean they never visited. Both of them would rather hold on to the memories of how those places had once been rather than see how they had changed through the centuries. 

Distracted, Catarina almost didn’t notice as Ragnor splashed frigid loch water at her. She leapt out of the way with an undignified shriek at the last moment to dodge it. 

“Come on, Catarina. How do you know you don’t like it if you won’t try it?” he teased, echoing the lectures she and Magnus tended to give him.

The faint Scottish burr in Ragnor’s voice had become more pronounced than usual since they had arrived in Scotland, Catarina noticed. Most warlocks’ accents became such a muddle after a few centuries of living in different parts of the world, it was hard to tell what they had been originally, especially with how languages shifted and changed over time, but Ragnor had always been exceptionally stubborn. It didn’t sound quite the same as the modern Scottish accent, but it was close enough to be noticeable now that they were here. 

Sometimes Catarina wondered if her own voice still carried any traces of how her mother had once spoken, or if they had all been lost to the centuries of moving continents and ever evolving languages. 

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Catarina called to Ragnor’s retreating back, half wishing she had something to throw at him. “You decide you hate stuff all the time without trying it!”

Ragnor made a rude hand gesture and Catarina laughed at his ridiculousness, flopping back down onto the blanket they had spread for their lunch. She was determined to enjoy what passed as the heat of the sun here while Ragnor cooled off like a lunatic. 

She was starting to doze off when a distant shout startled her back to full wakefulness. She scrambled to her feet and scanned the water, trying to figure out what had caused the commotion. It had sounded like someone in trouble. 

She couldn’t see Ragnor, but there was a boat in sight now, quickly making its way toward shore. The man aboard waved frantically at her, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. 

“Monster!” The man shouted again, when he got close enough for her to hear him. “Run, lass!”

It couldn’t be a demon, Catarina thought. The boat wouldn’t have made it back to shore if it had been. A kelpie, maybe? Or another of the Fair Folk? They had a tendency to be bolder out here than they were closer to the big cities, and they enjoyed playing tricks on superstitious mundanes. But where was Ragnor?

The man on the boat reached the shore and hurriedly climbed out, barely managing to keep his feet under him as he grabbed Catarina’s arm, half for balance and half to try to drag her away from the water, urging her again to run.

“What are we running from?” Catarina asked, keeping her voice soft, like she was talking to a spooked horse, trying to help the frantic man calm down. She doubted there was anything in the loch that she and Ragnor couldn’t handle. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

“There’s a horned beast thrashing about in the water!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t an animal? An otter maybe?”

“Otters aren’t green!”

Catarina’s worry evaporated. It took all of her willpower to keep from laughing at the poor bewildered man.

“There it is!” the man shouted in fear again, the color draining from his face, and Catarina turned to see Ragnor’s horned head finally poking up out of the water. He was too far out for her to see his face, but she had the feeling he was laughing. 

“You go on ahead,” Catarina managed to choke out, halfway between amusement and annoyance. “I’ll be right behind you once I find my friend.”

“It’s yer own funeral, lassie,” the man said, abandoning his boat and running off through the hills. 

Ragnor emerged from the water a few minutes later. He shook the water out of his white curls, showering Catarina with cold droplets. “He was certainly in a hurry,” Ragnor said, an amused smirk at the corners of his lips. 

“He thought you were a monster, you unglamoured idiot,” Catarina thwapped Ragnor’s arm. His damp skin was chilled from his swim. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to gather the torches and pitchforks.”

Ragnor shrugged, unbothered, before conjuring a towel to dry himself off with. “No one will believe him.”

Catarina rolled her eyes. Sometimes it shocked her that Ragnor had ever survived the witch hunts with his attitude. 

——

They finished their hike in Inverness, where they had been planning to spend a couple of days to rest before they parted ways and Portaled home. 

They decided to stop in one of the local pubs they passed for a drink before they made their way to their bed and breakfast for a proper dinner. Ragnor had spent much of the afternoon waxing poetic about how Scotch whiskey tasted better if you actually drank it in Scotland.

“That’s the foreign woman I met!” A familiar voice shouted before they could even make their way to the bar to order their drinks. “She saw the beast too! Glad to see ye got away from it, lass!”

It was the man from Loch Ness, sitting in the center of a laughing crowd, a pint of ale in his hands, and several empty ones littering the table. 

“Did ye really?” another man asked, tilting back tipsily in his chair to eye the newcomers. “Archie here has been telling us quite a tale about how a terrible monster nearly killed ‘im.”

Catarina shot a look at Ragnor, who had hastily glamoured himself when they walked in the door. An idea dawned on her. A slow smile spread across her face. 

“I did,” she said, grinning wider as Ragnor caught her eye. She ignored his puzzled look and turned to the table of onlookers. “It was quite a fearsome creature.”

Someone pressed a fresh pint into her hands and she found herself sat at the table with Archie and his audience. It seemed his story had grown larger with each pint he had drank, which suited her just fine. 

“It musta been at least ten feet long!” Archie slurred, sloshing a bit of ale out of his glass as he gestured for emphasis. “Maybe even fifteen! It’s body like a great serpent undulating under the water.”

Catarina took a sip of ale to cover her laughter. “Yes, it was absolutely enormous. It could probably stand to go on a diet,” she said. “It had horns too, didn’t it?”

“Humongous ones! Bigger than any ram ye ever saw! I bet it could gore a grown man!”

Catarina had to cover another laugh as she looked at the small horns curving from Ragnor’s temples through his glamour. “And it was terribly ugly,” she added for good measure, just to see his reaction.

“Hideous!” Archie agreed.

Ragnor harrumphed, and Catarina kicked him in the shin under the table before he could ruin her game, but he had drawn Archie’s attention. 

“Did ye see it too? Is that why ye ran off and left the poor lass alone?”

The whole table erupted in more laughter. “_I_ ran off and left her?” Ragnor sputtered angrily. “You’re the one who—“

Catarina laid what to an outsider would look like a gentle hand on Ragnor’s arm, but in actuality was a spell freezing him in place before he could start a pub brawl. “He actually missed the entire thing,” Catarina said. “He dropped his book on the trail and had gone back to look for it.”

She patted his arm affectionately, using the movement to release the spell. He glowered at her, but the conversation moved on.

“Poisonous green and striped like a tiger. And I’m sure it’s just as deadly! We were lucky to escape with our lives!”

“Was it striped? I thought I saw spots,” Catarina said, projecting as much sweet innocence as she could into the correction. 

Archie looked confused for a moment, and then nodded, “Aye, right ye are lass,” he said, scratching his chin. “Spotted like a great leopard.”

By the end of the night, half the pub was ready to go hunting for what they were calling the Loch Ness Monster, but the increasingly exaggerated details of the creature no longer resembled the fuming warlock sitting next to her, which had been her real goal.

The sour look that had been on Ragnor’s face all night was certainly a fun bonus though.

“I hate you,” Ragnor grumped when they finally left to find the bed and breakfast they were supposed to have checked into hours ago.

“No you don’t,” Catarina laughed, leaning into his side until he let out a deep, put-upon sigh and slung an arm over her shoulders as they walked. 

——

That autumn, Catarina visited the London Institute in order to help Tessa brew a fresh batch of a potion that helped with the aches and pains the chill of winter brought for Will now. 

“Catarina, didn’t you send a postcard from Inverness last summer?” Tessa asked after Catarina arrived that afternoon. They were seated in the parlor, a tray of tea and biscuits on the table in front of them.

Catarina nodded and took a sip of her tea. She wasn’t sure she’d ever really get used to being treated like a guest in a Shadowhunter Institute. “Ragnor and I went hiking,” she said. 

“We’ve been fielding a storm of rumors about a monster in Loch Ness,” Will said, his eyes still bright and clear despite the deep lines around them. “The Edinburgh Institute is at their wits end, and the Fair Folk are denying any involvement. You didn’t see anything unusual did you?”

“Oh. Oh, _that_.”

Tessa raised her eyebrows. “You mean there really _is_ something in Loch Ness?”

“It was just Ragnor,” Catarina replied, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. “He was being smug, so I may have encouraged the rumor about a hideous monster a little.”

A mischievous smile spread over Tessa’s face as she refilled Catarina’s cup. “Well, now you have to tell us the whole story.” 

By the time Catarina was finished with her tale, Will was doubled over with laughter and Tessa was wiping tears of mirth from the corners of her eyes. They both knew how Ragnor could be. 

“We’ll tell Edinburgh to stop harassing the Faeries and start spreading the word that it’s a mundane hoax,” Will said, once he got himself under control. “That should take care of it.”

It didn’t of course, and the legend of the Loch Ness Monster persisted for decades, much to Ragnor Fell’s annoyance. 


End file.
